The pressure was on for Mark and the
Viagra®(sildenafil citrate) Racing
Team going into Sunday night’s Pop Secret 500 at the California Speedway.
Sitting just 35 points outside of 10th place with only two races remaining
in the race to make the top-10 cutoff, Mark and his team would once again
have to muster up a top-notch performance in order to keep their Nextel Cup
Championship hopes alive. And once again the team was ready for the
challenge.
Mark and the No. 6 team responded with a commanding performance. Exhibiting a
dominate car that led 65 laps, the most of the race, they contended for the win
all evening and ran to their third top-three performance in the past four races
and their fourth top-three in the last six. In the end the strong performance moved
Mark into the Nextel Cup top-10 for the first time of the season. With only one
race remaining at Richmond, Mark currently sits in 10th-place, just nine points
out of ninth, 20 points outside of eighth and 25 points ahead of 11th. Mark moved
up two places from 12th with the finish.
" This is a great race team and I'm just so proud to drive the Viagra® Taurus and
I mean it,” said Mark after the race. “It's a pleasure and it's an honor. These
guys are awesome and it’s just an honor to work with them.”
It took a late caution to put an end to Mark’s bid to win a race that saw him
climb into the lead on three separate occasions, en route to leading 65 laps and
earning 10 additional bonus points for leading a lap and the most laps during the
race. Mark’s car was the class of the field on long runs, posting times that were
consistently four tenths faster a lap than the rest of the field. However, the
No. 6 Viagra? Ford tended to take a few laps to get warmed up before it got going.
Mark had passed Kasey Kahne for the third time of the evening to secure second
place and was quickly moving in on race leader Elliot Sadler, when caution was
called with only 17 laps remaining in the race. In a controversial call NASCAR
placed Mark behind Kahne’s No. 9 car when the race went green. With only 10 laps
remaining Mark would run out of time, and the team would have to settle for third
on and evening that saw Mark clearly display the dominate car.
“We had a killer race car on the long greens, but we can't help it the cautions
came out,” added Mark. “If that thing would have gone all the way we were sitting
pretty, but I'm tickled to death to run third and be a contender - to get up there
and lead the race on the long run.
|
